FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)
File Name: Voices E26 Randy Miller.mp3
File Length: 00:10:47
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Introduction: Welcome to Voices, a podcast brought to you by the Seneca Valley School District.
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Jeff Krakoff: I'm Jeff Krakoff, and today we're talking with Randy Miller, director of buildings and grounds at Seneca Valley School District. Thanks for joining us.
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Randy Miller: Thank you. Appreciate it.
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Jeff Krakoff: So we're in the winter months right now.
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Jeff Krakoff: Let's say there's there's there's a storm coming, the forecasters, as they like to do are alarming us of big things happening. Tsnowfall take us through how you prepare for a snow fall or any other type of inclement weather.
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Randy Miller: And Jeff, that's a that's a big part of what my responsibilities are here with the district in terms of the director of buildings and grounds. The grounds portion of it is everything from mowing and in the winter months, its salt, salting, clearing, plowing. That preparation starts basically as soon as the winter ends. So.
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Randy Miller: Back in February, March of last year, right then and there, we take an inventory of what we have. We start the process of ordering all the salt, ice melt, make sure it's replenished well in advance of each each winter season. We make sure that the plows and salt dispensers that we have for the vehicles are all installed on the on the trucks and on the Kobodas and things like that. And then we do all the preventive maintenance on those to assure that all of our equipment is working properly and ready for use. So that preparation takes place well in advance of our of the winter seasoning season in the snow and the ice before it arrives.
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Jeff Krakoff: That's good to know y ou prepare way in advance. So how many people what type of staff personnel are involved in this preparation for bad weather?
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Randy Miller: What we try to do, Jeff, is we study, we get the National Weather Service reports. They come to my phone. 24/7. We analyze that. We look to see, OK, what what are we facing here? And from that, we make a decision of what kind of personnel we need. If we have a big snow event, a big ice event, it's all hands on deck in our department as well. We have all of our district maintenance personnel that takes care of the secondary campus.
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Randy Miller: And then we have our building personnel, our maintenance and custodians at each of the elementary school campuses. We have them ready to go to take care of theirs. And then we also have an outside snow removal company. That's Funyak Landscaping. They they come in, they do a great job for us. And clearing at the district parking areas and the drives that are on the on the campuses. So our folks focus on the sidewalks, the steps, the areas close up to the building with plowing, shoveling, salting and ice melt so that we get as many people involved,
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Randy Miller: there's conversation sometimes that begin at 3:00 in the morning with with with Funyak and with our personnel, our our our each of our maintenance and our district personnel arrive typically at 5:00 a.m. and sometimes that needs to be adjusted before, again, depending on what we're expecting and to make sure that we've got our secondary campus ready before those students arrive. And then with a little bit later, start with our elementary school campuses, then we'll get those done, too, before before the faculty and the staff and the students arrive.
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Jeff Krakoff: OK, well, segue from talking about the different campuses. How many school sites and areas are we talking about that need to be cleared and planned for?
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Randy Miller: The biggest that we have is, of course, our secondary campus, which encompasses our senior high school, our intermediate high school and the middle school. That's our largest. We have and district offices are also on our secondary campus. We have seven schools total that we're there we're responsible for. So we have four elementary school sites as it sits right now. We have Evans City, Haine, Rowan and Connoquenessing Valley. So we have a we have a lot of property.
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Randy Miller: We have a lot of clearing, salting, sidewalks and parking on all those campuses. So that's why when I when I say it's all hands on deck, it has to be so that we can have those ready to go when when everybody arrives in the morning. Because I know at some point I'm going to be getting; communicating with our superintendents because they're going to want to know what's the status and are we ready? Can we do it? And that's when that communication gets gets started very early in the morning.
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Jeff Krakoff: Randy, can you walk us through the process? You mentioned clearing, salting. What's where do you start? What are what are all the steps involved in making the schools and the grounds safe?
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Randy Miller: It starts off with again, if it's if it's a sleet, freezing rain type event, that's going to be more ice melt and salting. We have salt spreaders. We have Kabodas, we have Quads, a lot of it gets done. Of course, the concrete stairs leading into buildings can't be done with with a machine. So a lot of hand salting gets done there. We start there and work our way out towards the sidewalks. And at that time, almost concurrently and usually before we even begin Funyak is already plowing, and salting the the driveways and the parking areas.
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Randy Miller: So within about an hour or so, once everybody gets started, we're pretty well underway. And then there might be if we have a freeze over where everything melted and it's it was an hour later and now it's getting close to arrival. We may go back and do a do a second salt just to make sure that we just continue to monitor the temperature and the conditions so that when they do arrive, it's safe for them to get from their vehicles off the bus, however, their means, if they're being dropped off, that they have a safe entrance into the building.
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Jeff Krakoff: Let's talk about the timing. Let's say there's a storm forecast for tomorrow, a big weather event. Walk us through the timing. When do you start and when does it end?
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Randy Miller: What we do, I mean, the timing of the events, it always varies based on when the forecast snow or freezing freezing rain, sleet is expected to start and also the amount of accumulation that's expected if the snow arrives through the night, most of the administrators, the superintendents, the director of transportation, myself, director of communications, we begin communicating very, very early in the morning, sometimes as early as 3:30, 4:30base a.m., again, depending on the timing.
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Randy Miller: We all know there's been times where you get predicted that we're going to have a snow storm and it's going to it's going to be and then we get a we get barely a dusting. The National Weather Service has been pretty accurate. And so we do base a lot of our decisions on that. But it's actually when we see it starting, so that's when it all starts. And then we use this information that's used to determine if there's going to be.
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Randy Miller: Let me back up a sec, once that communication starts and the snow is arriving, many of us will get up, get in our vehicles and start traveling the roads in and around the area. I live in the district, so I'll drive in areas around my neighborhood, bordering neighborhoods, Route 19, 79 our Director of Transportation Jim Pearson, who I believe you're also going to be speaking to, he does the same thing. My supervisors do it. We get and get an idea of what the actual roads look like and then we report that back because very shortly after that, we're going to be contacted by the superintendents to see what our thoughts are about how the roads are, whether that's going to help to determine whether we have a one hour delay, a two-hour or or actually have to cancel.
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Randy Miller: In most cases, I will point out, Jeff, in most cases, all of our secondary and elementary school campuses are cleared and ready by six, six-thirty in the morning. The reason a lot of times we do get delays or cancellations is because the roads are impassable. Most of the time we're ready to go. And a lot of our conversations are I'm asked, what's the status of the campus walkways, we're ready, but if we can't safely get the kids to the bus stop because of freezing freezing temperatures, sometimes, ice or the accumulation of snow or the roads just aren't passable, then a lot of times we may do this and then still not have students and staff on campus, but we try to get ahead of it.
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Randy Miller: It starts very early in the morning and have things ready to go. So I don't ever want to be in a position in the seat that I sit in that I have to respond to to the Super and say we're not ready because we're not cleared and have to delay because we're not ready. So so far since I've been here, that hasn't been the case. We've always been ready and it's up to others whether or not the roads are passable to get them here.
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Jeff Krakoff: And that's impressive. So last question. Do you have any tips for staff, students or any visitors that might be on any of the campuses from a safety standpoint, when the weather turns bad,
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Randy Miller: It's it's something that you know it's obvious.
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Randy Miller: Everybody's heard it, footwear is so important during during an ice event, during a snow event, rubber soles or boots to give you that extra traction, treat every wet surface as if it could be icy. Be slow, be careful, especially on concrete stairs, use the railing, make sure you got good footing. We do ask that if there is areas that do ice over, you think it could be a safety issue, notify our department and within minutes we'll get it taken care of.
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Randy Miller: The last thing we want to do is have somebody slip and fall and injure themselves because
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Randy Miller: they didn't take their time or they weren't wearing the proper footwear or an area wasn't salted or cleared properly.
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Jeff Krakoff: All right. That's Randy Miller, director of buildings and grounds. Thanks so much for joining us.
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Randy Miller: Always a pleasure talking to you, Jeff. Thank you.
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Jeff Krakoff: Take care.
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Randy Miller: Happy New Year.